Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/22

 6 —how, that is, but by each man doing bread-labour to feed himself with his own hands, as Bóndaref expresses it?

We have become so entangled, have involved ourselves in so many laws—religious, social, and family—have accepted so many precepts—as Isaiah says, precept upon precept, here a precept and there a precept—that we have completely lost the perception of what is good and what is bad.

One man performs Mass, another collects an army or the taxes to pay for it, a third acts as judge, a fourth studies books, a fifth heals people, a sixth instructs them, and freeing themselves from bread-labour under these pretexts, they thrust it on to others, and forget that men are dying of exhaustion, labour, and hunger; and that, in order that there may be people to sing Mass to, to defend with an army, to judge, to doctor, or to instruct, it is necessary, first of all, that they should not die of hunger. We forget that there may be many duties, but that among them all there is a first and a last, and that one must not fulfil the last before fulfilling the first, just as one must not harrow before ploughing.

And it is to this first, undoubted duty in the sphere of practical activity, that Bóndaref's teaching brings us back. Bóndaref shows that the performance of this duty hinders nothing and presents no obstacles, yet saves men from the misery of want and temptation Above all, the performance of this duty would destroy that terrible separation of mankind into two classes which hate each other and hide their mutual hatred by cajolery. Bread-labour, says Bóndaref, equalizes all and clips the wings of luxury and lust.

One cannot plough or dig wells dressed in fine clothes, with clean hands, and nourishing one's self on delicate food. Work at one sacred occupation, common to all, will draw men together. Bread-labour, Bóndaref says, will restore reason to those who have lost it by standing aside from the life natural to man, and will give happiness and content to those engaged